Swing State Swing: Florida

We asked our chief political writer, David Paul Kuhn, to get in a car and drive from Portland, Maine to Portland, Ore., via all the Battleground States – those states expected to be the most hotly contested in the presidential election. Armed with a pen, laptop, camera and plenty of No Doz, Kuhn is sending back dispatches that will offer impressions and snapshots of a country making up its mind.

FLORIDA

Pensacola

Going to Pensacola to speak to Florida voters is like going to Orange County to speak to Californians or the Upper East Side to speak to New Yorkers. This is solid Bush country.

"I don't like him," says Nancy Bass, a blonde 44-year-old from Pensacola, when asked about John Kerry.

As she pumps gas at the first station crossing into Florida from Alabama, along Interstate 10 East, Nancy says, "I cannot stand him. He didn't do anything when he was in Vietnam. He came back and did all kinds of bad things.

"I don't like that he and his running mate both are trial lawyers and what they are going to do to this country being a trial lawyer," she adds. "They are going to hurt every business in this country."

John Kerry never was a trial lawyer. In fact, he was a prosecutor. That doesn't matter to Nancy. John Edwards was a trail lawyer, and that's all that matters.

The Kerry campaign hopes Edwards can help sway voters on Republican turf like Pensacola. South of here is the 1-4 Corridor, stretching from Tampa past Orlando, to the eastern coast, an affluent area that carries the bulk of Florida's non-aligned voters. South Florida is where Democrats dominate.

But with even the traditionally conservative Cuban vote of south Florida split and polling showing the state a dead heat, no one can say for certain who wins the Sunshine State.

President Bush will need a massive turnout in the north to counter the south. And growing disdain among Republicans for Kerry may have to serve as a prime impetus to bring conservatives to the polls.

It sure is enough for Nancy, who's not a diehard Bush supporter.

"I don't know that he's done as much as he needed to this past year and all the things going on," she says of the president.

"If somebody was running against Bush on the Republican side I'd probably vote for him."

"He stands for values that I believe in – keep America, America. Let's stand behind our military. Let's stand behind them. When we make an action to go some place let's stand behind him 100 percent," he continues, speaking with his arms crossed beneath the harsh Florida sun.

He says that being Republican is being "about America."

"It's about what we believe in. What it began with 200 years ago," David says. "And I think that's what the Republican Party tries to hold together. So many people nowadays forget what this nation was built on."

But he explains that although he fervently believes that the Republican Party is the party of values, he also believes the "media brings up more of the left wing and right wing issues than what people are all about."

It's still only politics to David. He sells cars. He has a wife, a good Republican as well. And although he's friends with Democrats, he isn't chummy with "the hard liberals."

Not those that "stand for abortion, which I don't. They stand for keeping the church out of everything, which I don't."

David, thin with a moustache, says he votes person and platform, not party. And once again this year, he won't be backing his party for president.

David has no problem with John Kerry. "I really believe the man's heart is in the right place. I think he believes a lot of what he said… I'm sure he represents his people. I'm sure he's a man of honor."

But David wants experience. He wants an incumbent, with a little dynasty to boot.

"What I think about Bush is that he has benefited from coming from a family that has a president in the family. I'm sure he's been exposed to a lot of people and situations that have helped developed him. I think that's a good thing," he says. "I think he showed a lot of wisdom in picking someone as strong as a Cheney for vice president."

David's boss thinks differently. Big Richard Sanfilippo comes outside and says he's the last real Democrat in Pensacola.

"It turns out that in our county here, which George Bush came to visit last week or so, most people are still registered as Democrats," he says.

"This was a predominately Democratic part, back in the '70s or so," Richard says. "When the Republicans figured out they could capture the southern Democrats, appeal to them in certain ways, most of these folks started voting for Republicans presidents and they've been doing it ever since."

Richard benefited from the Bush tax cuts, but he remains unswayed. He thinks John Kerry "is pretty representative of the Democratic Party."

"I like George Bush. I think he's been a good president as well. I just think that the Democratic Party represents my views a little bit more."

He's voting for Kerry because "I don't necessarily agree with Bush's policy on the Iraq war." Richard explains that he tends "to be a little bit more liberal when it comes to social issues and more conservative when it comes to environmental issues."

Richard and David aren't excited by their candidates. David mentions John McCain and Collin Powell with reverence. Richard says, "I think if you asked the people they'd probably look for different people for the best candidates of the two we've got running."

The rancor rising between in the campaign over the candidates' Vietnam pasts has some reverberations here.

"It's the choice between a person who actually served on a swift boat and someone who ran away from one," says Richard, chuckling. He adds, "Anybody that will honestly admit what happened in the '60s, if you went into the reserves you were trying to get out of the serving."

But to David, there's another angle. This is Pensacola, a military aviation town. And President Bush is "the other candidate in town, who happens to be a president, and was a fighter pilot." And that's enough for David.

But it does "make me feel like I can have a voice in something," she says, pushing her blonde hair back. That's the adult part she likes.

She was undecided. Now, she's heavily leaning toward George W. Bush.

Working the register at one of two eateries at the Pensacola airport, Hannah says that Kerry's campaign "makes me uncomfortable." Asked to explain why, she struggles. It's a visceral reaction.

"Even though Bush has a lot of flack going against him, he's done a good job with our country," she says. "Nobody knows what they would have done in all the incidents that he's been in, so he just handled it how he could. George Bush has good character and that is really what matters to me about someone."

By David Paul Kuhn